


Daddario's Tale

by ToughPaperRound



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, BAMF Alec Lightwood, Canon-Typical Violence, Future Fic, M/M, Moon, Rune nerds rule, Runes, against demons, and Parabatai if we're honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 11:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToughPaperRound/pseuds/ToughPaperRound
Summary: It's 14 years in the future. Alec Lightwood and Jace Herondale work on the moon.





	Daddario's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Have you seen the video of the Q&A from Brisbane OZ ComicCon 2018?  
> In the [video clip](https://youtu.be/TpGzwqnCYbs/) you can see from 38:30 Matt answers a question about a future plotline he’d like to see on the show. (#SaveShadowhunters)
> 
> Matt’s answer is transcribed in the end notes in case you're avoiding spoilers.
> 
> Here I have told the story in full, because I enjoyed the tale. Full credit to the delightful Matt, of course. And also to the questioner who inspired it!  
> Thanks are also due to Mansikka for the Beta. A gift basket of space rations is on the way to you.

“Director Lightwood, Mr Herondale. Welcome back to Luna Base.”

“Hmmpph. Yes, good, good. Give me ten minutes and then I want to see the outgoing team in the OP centre for the usual briefing.”

“Of course, Director Lightwood.”

Alec Lightwood grabbed on to the bars set into the padded ceiling and walls of the portal room to keep himself steady. His stomach lurched against the immediate drop in grav after the portal journey from Earth to the Luna Institute. He knew it should be easy by now but it still turns his belly every time.

Jace Herondale, however, took one leaping stride out of the portal, nodded an answering salute to the guards greeting them and then strode off down the hallway to the residential wing. There he dumped the bags he’d carried for both himself and Alec, before hopping over the kitchen counters to grab some coffees before the handover briefing.

Once again, Alec considered asking his husband Magnus to make him an anti-emetic potion. But if Jace got to know about it, the nonsense he’d have to endure would be never-ending. Compared with the mere fifteen minutes of nonsense from Alec’s own body as it grew sufficiently accustomed to the grav changes each time, he knew which was the better choice.

As he focused on not losing his lunch or hitting his head off the ceiling, Alec remembered their first journey here. That journey had had to be made the mundane way, strapped into a tin box interstellar shuttle vessel that had had Jace sweating far more profusely than any portal journey to Luna has ever affected Alec.

Magnus Bane, being the original inventor of the portal, had insisted he be the warlock who accompanied them on that first journey, in order to set up the first interstellar portal. He could not, of course, make a portal to the moon without having first been there himself. It was too far into the unknowns of portal technology and he didn’t want to risk estimating it, even with the high quality 3D scans of the pods set aside for the Luna Institute. A portal to the other side of the Earth was only slightly more difficult than a portal to a neighbouring room, but a portal to the new base mundanes had fashioned at Luna? The unknowns were surely unknown.

Now Luna Institute had the luxury of a permanent Portal set up to reach the old New York Institute, these days nothing more than a warehouse and transport hub.

Finally sealing the rifts between the demon realms of Hell and New York was just one of the great achievements that Magnus and Alec could list from their long career working together, High Warlock of Brooklyn and the New York Institute Head. Combined with the significant reduction in Downworld tensions in the area, these changes left Alec without a job as the NY Institute was downgraded significantly. He had done his job so well he made himself redundant.

A year of shifting around the world on various speaking engagements, training and liaison secondments for the Clave was far more than he could stand. He missed his husband! So when Simon had jokingly said that now the moon would need an Institute after watching the news that amazing day when the first settlers arrived… wheels had begun to whirl in Alec's mind.

Just two short months later and the Clave had agreed to all of his proposals:  
\- A complex shift arrangement of Shadowhunters teams to work two intensive weeks on Luna, then four weeks at home to recuperate and be with family.  
\- Autonomy for the three new Institute Heads or ‘Director of Moon Operations’, to act as they saw fit against the new interstellar challenges.  
\- The power for Alec as Primary Director to handpick not only his team at the Luna Institute, but also the two co-Heads.  
\- The very latest in scanning and comms equipment to give warnings and cover a wide net of space around the Lunar orbit.  
\- A permanent portal to Earth in case of medical emergencies. (Which became a vital necessity when the first Shadowhunter casualty of Luna discovered that an iratze rune only functioned at under one-sixth of normal Earth powers. Thankfully, other runes were not affected. But it was postulated that gravity played a vital role in the correct functioning of this one rune. The process was still not fully understood. Scarring was more common, unfortunately, but was generally improved over time with the correct ointments whilst on Earth. Magnus joked that the scars across Alec’s face only made him more ruggedly handsome.)

Alec was most proud of the groundbreaking subsection he’d snuck into the proposal which allowed him to employ downworlders to work alongside Shadowhunters in tech roles. There were several young vampires with excellent engineering backgrounds who were ideal for the base. That they didn’t need oxygen was incredibly useful. But they loved to work there because since Luna base is on the far side of the moon, they could work for almost two full weeks without being exposed to any sunlight.

Alec liked to think that the rapid acceptance of his proposal was because he could craft a damn fine case for the Clave these days. He knew, however that rather it was because even within that first month of mundane settlement, demons were targeting the desolate wastes of the moon. An increasingly desperate situation and many brave lives lost had forced the Clave to see that an immediate base for Shadowhunters was the only possible solution.

Shadowhunters were pledged to protect mundanes wherever they decided to live. Even now, the Clave were learning from their lack of foresight, and were planning for the mundane settlement of Mars.

 

***

 

On Earth, Alec had become used to the first warning sign of an impending demon attack being a insistent chirrup from his mobile phone.

A text alert, sent out by the Ops Centre to give the coordinates of an attack and demanding his immediate assistance for the patrol team on call that night. He would groan and mutter as he threw on his gear and grabbed his weaponry, but the joys of living with Magnus compensated for the pain of ripping himself out of bed in the middle of the night. Magnus had simply developed a storage area and shower near the door for the filthy ichor-laden gear so as to protect their precious handwoven rugs.

Years ago, Alec would have been in the Ops Centre itself to see the first reports coming in and made the call for the alert sirens to blare out.  
In fact that felt like aeons ago, before he'd moved to live with Magnus rather than at his childhood 'home’, the Institute.

Now, 14 years after those heady honeymoon days, Alec was once again shocked into a full alert by a blaring siren across the pod of the Luna Institute, signalling a presumed Major Invasion of demons into Luna’s orbit. He pelted straight to the Ops Centre to gauge the threat.

The central display screen clearly showed only one demon but it was hideously large: an interstellar Dragon Demon and it was arriving at an incredible speed.

Alec was suiting up even as he ran to the airlock. Jace was already there grabbing weapons and attaching seraph blades to the enchanted clasps on his suit. Together they exchanged a guilty gleeful glance as they realised they would be the first on the ground to meet this threat. The night patrol were already on a mission on the far side of the moon.

“It’s been too long Old Man, are you ready for this?” said Jace.

Alec rolled his eyes behind his visor as he punched the button for a rapid cycle in the airlock and synced up his wrist display to the incoming data.

The Dragon Demon was already visible to the naked eye… and it was clear from the calculated trajectory that it was set on attacking the oldest mundane village outpost in the crater named Tsiolkovskiy. As one, the two Parabatai Shadowhunters leapt into motion out of the airlock shield doors and bounded across the rocky ground to counter the threat.

The demon screeched across the vacuum of space lazily flapping it’s wings. Once more Alec wondered to himself why on Luna the interstellar demons bothered to screech (when all creation knew that sound does not carry across the vacuum of space) or indeed why they bothered to move their wings (as large as they were, they were clearly generating ineffective lift for such a huge mass in the thin atmosphere of Luna, much less in space).

The dragon neared and Alec’s arrows were having little effect. This dragon demon, it was clear, was an incredibly strong Greater Demon, and Alec realised that this was a desperate situation. Jace and Alec had arrived at the crater as the demon began to raze storage huts with it’s fiery breath. The lives of several hundred peaceful mundanes were at immediate risk, and who knew where the demon would turn next.

Alec planted his space boots firmly against a large moon rock, grabbed Jace around his waist and heaved him across the thin atmosphere over the crater.

Jace was caught unawares as he commed to the villagers to evacuate. He was flung up high above the crater towards the Greater Demon. He managed to unsheath a seraph blade but dropped it before his gloves could grip in the proper manner.

Too soon he found himself, unprepared, heading for the horror that was the mouth of the demon. He had a brief impression of unheard screaming, heat haze and shark teeth.

Then it was darkness once more as Jace was wedged into a tight tunnel. His body was shoved and squeezed. The hellish stench of sulphur was unbearable, seeping in even through his top-grade suit.

After interminable moments of falling and a jerking pressure from all sides, Jace lurched as if he had been in a mammoth crash between two of the mundanes’ interstellar shuttles. His head rang dully and he struggled to get his breath. The pressure on his chest did not reduce, even as the lurching and jolting ended.

He struggled to free an arm towards his secondary seraph blade and slashed at the strange deep red walls that held him so tightly. It was difficult to get any purchase as he had no room to swing his arm. Although he was cutting through somehow, piece by piece, he began to lose consciousness.

Suddenly he was aware of being at the centre of an explosion. He fell to the ground sharply.

Alec, it turned out, had of course been desperate to free his Parabatai. He could tell Jace was still alive although he felt the desperate claustrophobia and struggle to breathe through their ever-strong Parabatai connection. He sent determination and reassurance through their bond as he tried to use his seraph blade to rescue Jace. But he was too worried he would also slash Jace if he cut into the demon’s neck.

Finally he had been inspired by the legends of Clary Fairchild to scribe an ‘Open’ rune on the scaly throat of the demon. That had killed the demon, sending it back to Hell. It also freed Jace from his temporary sarcophagus, wedged deep into the demon’s throat.

He rushed to Jace’s side and swept his glove across the visor to wipe away the filth that covered his Parabatai. He checked the support systems readout display on the suit. A set of weak amber and green lights glowed to reassure him that all would be OK. Gently pressing their visors together so that sound would travel between them, he said, “Jace, my brother, are you OK? Can I move you?”

Jace’s eyelids fluttered and his mismatched eyes were briefly raised up to meet Alec’s concerned gaze. “Warn a guy next time you want to play skittles with a Dragon Demon, yeah?”

 

*****

 

To share or interact with ToughPaperRound (not Matt, sorry!!)... here's[ a handy post on Tumblr](https://toughpaperround.tumblr.com/post/178645525853/daddarios-tale-toughpaperround-shadowhunters)

If you love Space Malec as much as I do you'll enjoy this [HoT tale by Pameluke](https://archiveofourown.org/series/907920).

**Author's Note:**

> Below is a direct transcription of Matt's answer at the Brisbane OZ ComicCon 2018.  
> As you'll see, I decided to alter the ending (just slightly) in order to save a fellow countryman.  
> See [this YouTube clip](https://youtu.be/TpGzwqnCYbs/) from about 38:30.
> 
> "OK. It’s 14 years in the future. The Institute has moved to the Moon.  
> Alec is Primary Director of Moon Operations… it’s a Logistics position, he’s basically retired.  
> He’s scarred - he’s got scars across his face at this point because his healing rune doesn’t work on the moon cos reasons.
> 
> There’s an attack from an interstellar demon beast. It’s flying above the moon, it has wings even though that’s not how a lack of atmosphere works - he flaps them anyway, he’s magic.
> 
> He swoops down and he’s gonna eat the entire village. Alec in this single heroic instance grabs Jace and throws him at the dragon. The dragon chokes on Jace and Alec says 'Oh well, that’s too bad.'
> 
> Alec doesn’t die but the dragon does."
> 
>  
> 
> Please can someone else write the Cowboy Shadowhunters AU that Matt & Dom requested to star in next? (And [another example](https://daddariodaily.com/post/183123896212/shadowhuntersseries-la-muerta-if-you-could/) here of Matt asking for a Western vehicle.)


End file.
